Books That Invite Wonder, Reflection, and a Return to Beauty

Poetry has a way of helping us notice the world — its rhythms, seasons, and the quiet moments that shape us. My books are written for readers who long for grounding, hope, and a deeper attentiveness to everyday life.

Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home

The invitation to discover our deepest longings is often a call to lean into the many ways we express ourselves—as poet or painter or simply a person whose hand holds onto our Creator’s on the pathway home.

Mining the Bright Birds offers a glimmer of light to shine the way.

“Lean into the love between the lines.’ Poet Jody Collins writes with psalmic sensibilities, often underscored by longing. In attending to people, creatures, and seasons, she attunes the ear and heart to everyday moments of resonance. Her grateful hymn to living bids me join the chorus: ‘. . . all gift. / All God” –  Laurie Klein, poet/songwriter of “I Love You, Lord”

Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home is published by Wipf & Stock/Resource Publications and is available via the links below.

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  • Kaleidoscope

    “I just received my copy of Mining the Bright Birds….amazing how the theme subtly asserts itself…don’t know why that took me so by surprise! It’s a clever kaleidoscope of wordplay!”
    Denise A.

  • reading the World

    “The collection begins with an epigraph from St. Teresa of Avila: ‘God is calling,’ and Jody Collins answers with poems filled with ‘beauty-aleaf and aberry.’ Her poems are the way she is ‘reading the world.’ She listens to birds, she listens to her heart, she writes poetry, and she learns to ‘lean / into the love between the lines.’ Collins finds her way to God, daily glimmer by daily glimmer, bird song by bird song.”
    Megan Willome
    author of the joy of poetry

  • Like holiness

    “‘Like holiness / with wings,’ Jody Collins’s new collection, Mining the Bright Birds, sings a life of prayer, writing, gardening, family, and birds of every hue. Wise, poetic meditations assure us that we too are made for hope, ‘for here and hear.’ Collins encourages us to wait patiently and ‘rest on beauty.’ In this way, like the poet, may we continue ‘past empty, quiet gray / searching for a hummingbird / in the snow,’ rediscovering home in the Creator.”
    Marjorie Maddox
    Author of begin with a question

  • Psalmic Sensibilities

    “‘Lean into the love between the lines.’ Poet Jody Collins writes with psalmic sensibilities, often underscored by longing. In attending to people, creatures, and seasons, she attunes the ear and heart to everyday moments of resonance. Her grateful hymn to living bids me join the chorus: ‘. . . all gift. / All God.’”
    Laurie Klein
    Poet/songwriter of “i love you lord”

  • Breathtaking

    “Jody Collins’s breathtaking poetry invites us into small spaces, in time, in creation, and within our own hearts where God’s glory waits ready to burst into song.”
    Shemaiah Gonzalez
    storyteller and essayist

Hearts on Pilgrimage-Poems & Prayers

Annual cycles in our physical world also mirror our interior lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. Readers will find the poems in Hearts on Pilgrimage echo the seasons, from Winter and its time of dormancy and rest, through Spring bringing new life, Summer’s burgeoning growth and flourishing, into Fall with an eye towards harvest and a future. Travelers will find a welcome poetic companion as they journey through whatever season is ahead, eyes and ears wide open to God’s invisible Kingdom drawing us home.

Hearts on Pilgrimage: Poems & Prayers is the perfect accompaniment for the journey. 

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  • full of warmth

    “In Hearts on Pilgrimage, Jody Collins takes her readers on a journey of delight and discovery. Each deftly rendered image – from doing dishes in the dark to listening to birdsong – paints a portrait of the mysteries that lay just beyond our reach. Full of warmth and insight, Collins’ poems invite you to take a seat at the table, drink deeply of everyday moments, and enter the presence of God.”
    Laura Kauffman
     author of Carolina Clay: A Collection of Poems on Love and Loss

  • Sacred in the everyday

    The poems of Hearts on Pilgrimage find the sacred in the everyday — a spider’s web, the music of the wind, the pattern in the sky, a flower in a field. But Collins does more: she sees, with a poet’s eye, the everyday holiness of the image in an ultrasound, the voice of a grandchild, and the natural process of aging. The collection is an exercise in startling stillness.
    Glynn Young
    contributing editor at Tweetspeak Poetry and author of the five Dancing Priest novels and Poetry at Work

  • she carves her heart

    In Hearts on Pilgrimage-Poems & Prayers, Jody Collins delights in things most of us take for granted—the ruby postscript of a raspberry, the honeyed breeze of dawn, and chip-clacking juncos. Collins carves her heart on and houses hope in these pages, inviting us to find our own balance in beauty and to seek God’s presence in every season.
    Sandra Heska King
    Community Care & Social Media at Tweetspeak Poetry, Photographer/Writer at sandraheskaking.com

  • read under an open sky

    I recommend reading Hearts on Pilgrimage under an open sky, accompanied by a warm cup of tea. A teacher-poet, Jody’s poems teach us to see, to hear—to notice our lives, and let the simple gifts arriving in each common moment move us to a place of praise and intimacy with God.
    Laura Boggess
    author of Playdates with God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grown-up World and Waiting for Neruda’s Memoirs

  • Wind of her Words

    “Collins work is deliberate, her cadence soothing. As I read, I find myself taking in deeper breaths and sighing, everything slowing around me. ‘Bring the wind of your spirit and build anew,’ she writes. Indeed. Except here the spirit arrives on the wind of her words, and I can feel something new building inside of me.”
    Shawn Smucker
    author of Light from Distant Stars